Here is an article from the San Diego Union Tribune, 12-08-12
MISSION BEACH — Anastasia Jackson was not your typical girlie girl. When the 26-year-old Philadelphia native wasn’t on duty as a Camp Pendleton Marine, the lance corporal spent her free time rappelling, bow hunting, shooting, playing video games and reading Tom Clancy novels. To her friends and family, she was a woman who could do it all.
“She was the real G.I. Jane,” said her older brother, Elliot Jackson of Philadelphia.
That’s why her death last weekend during a scuba dive off Mission Beach has left her military colleagues and loved ones so baffled.
Anastasia Jackson was diving on the Yukon, a sunken Canadian destroyer escort, with a dive instructor and three other classmates when she began having problems with her buoyancy, said San Diego lifeguard Lt. Nick Lerma.
The divemaster tried to keep her from descending all the way to the bottom by inflating his own buoyancy compensator. But the two lost their grip on each other. She dropped deeper, and he rocketed to the surface, Lerma said.
Her body was located about two hours later, just inside one of the ship’s compartments, lifeguard officials said. Her instructor and a classmate found her tangled in ropes.
By all indications, Jackson accidentally drowned on Dec. 1, said San Diego police Capt. Brian Ahern, although an investigation has been launched to determine what exactly went wrong.
The poor conditions that day didn’t help the situation. The coast was under a high-surf warning, and visibility was about five feet.
“The surge was nothing less than violent,” Lerma said.
The rough water knocked around searchers that afternoon and delayed the recovery of her body until the following morning.
The Coast Guard and the Medical Examiner’s Office are collaborating with police on the investigation. Jackson’s dive equipment is being examined at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for possible malfunctions.
At least three other divers have died at the Yukon site since 2000, when the ship was scuttled to create an artificial reef for recreational divers. The 366-foot warship lies nearly 2 miles off Mission Beach, in 105 feet of water in an area known as Wreck Alley. Many divers just explore the exterior of the wreck, but more advanced divers choose to enter its many compartments.
A German woman died in 2001, last seen alive descending to the Yukon.
Four years later, an advanced diver drowned after he entered an off-limits boiler room, where he likely suffered blackout conditions due to kicked-up silt, got disoriented and ran out of air.
Another dove the site without a partner.
The site has also had its share of rapid ascension-type injuries, when divers misjudge the amount of air left and aren’t able to take safety stops before surfacing, said lifeguard Lt. John Everheart.
“It is a deep dive. It’s certainly not a beginner’s dive,” Everheart said.
Jackson’s family said last week that they are reserving all comment on the accident until the investigation is complete.
Her commercial diver father, Bruce Atkins, remembers how Jackson would observe and assist him on dive outings in Miami as a little girl.
She had only recently started getting her dive certifications, working up to her advanced open water certification. She was working on her wreck diving specialty when she died.
She had plans to possibly take over her father’s business, Lux Sea Commercial Diving, Atkins said.
Jackson joined the Marines in 2010 and was a special intelligence system communicator assigned to the 1st Radio Battalion, 1st Marine Headquarters Group, I Marine Expeditionary Force.
“She was always a tremendous ball of energy, always a daddy’s girl,” said her father. “She excelled at everything she did.”
“She has hundreds of friends in disbelief.”
